Ark of the Stars

by Frank Borsch

  The Palenque's comm officer talked as though his life depended on it. He talked about the weather on Terra ... asked if the weather control on Sphinx—the oaf used that ugly Terran name for Drorah!—messed things up as regularly as it did on Terra ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... complained about the shift assignment on the Palenque, which was rigged from the start to his disadvantage ... asked if it was the same way on the Las-Toór ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... informed her of his concern about the galacto-political situation ... and didn't she think the Ako ... Excuse me! the Arkonides were behind everything bad, maybe even the incompetent weather control ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... asked her if she had ever met Perry Rhodan ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... and then launched into a long and certainly far-fetched story of what good buddies he and Perry were ... .

  Alemaheyu's torrent of words was like a tidal wave. Eniva wished she were back in the shelter of her cabin, small and malodorous though it might be. Or better yet, back on the Las-Toór, which she should have never left in order to get to know the barbarians better from up close. Because that was what the Terrans were, no doubt about it: barbarians. No Akonian of position would behave so badly as to refuse to let a conversation partner get a word in edgewise, and certainly it never would have occurred to anyone to do what that supreme barbarian Sharita Coho had cooked up. She had rid herself of a comm officer who was probably insufferable when he had nothing to do, and at the same time neutralized her Akonian hostage in a way that was unassailable. Hadn't she taken care of her guest at great sacrifice and assigned Eniva one of her most important men as a personal adjutant?

  Sharita Coho was a devil. If she ever had the chance, she would—

  "Here we are, Eniva."

  The Akonian had difficulty bringing herself back to the here and now. The Terran troll had stopped talking. What was going on?

  "We're where?"

  "This is my cabin."

  "Cabin? You said you wanted to guide me through the ship!" She wasn't afraid of Alemaheyu Kossa. If the Terran dwarf tried physical force on her, she would demonstrate the close anatomical similarities between Akonians and Terrans with one kick between his legs.

  "And that's just what I did! We went through the entire ship twice."

  "What? Why didn't you say anything?"

  Alemaheyu's eyes went wide with indignation. "But that's what I was doing the whole time! Weren't you listening?"

  "Oh, of course." Eniva remembered that she was on board the Palenque as something of an official representative of her people. There was no excuse for being infected by the Terran's impoliteness.

  "If you say so, I believe it. We Terrans are polite people, after all." Alemaheyu pointed invitingly to the door of his cabin. "And that's why it's customary for us to offer our guests something to drink."

  Eniva looked at the door to Alemaheyu's cabin. It wasn't different in any way from the hundred others that the Terran had led her past. With one exception: Someone, presumably Alemaheyu himself, had stuck a hand-lettered cardboard sign on it at eye-level with primitive adhesive strips.

  "ALEMAHEYU KOSSA," Eniva read. "AIR GUITAR MAIL ORDER SERVICE."

  She was rather proud of her Intercosmo and understood each of the words on the sign. Yes, she even had some idea what a guitar was, but still, the words didn't make any sense when taken together.

  Alemaheyu smiled at her with his perfect teeth, as though he expected her to ask about the sign.

  For that, she thought, you can wait a few dozen centuries!

  "Very well," the Akonian said. "Let's get it over with. One drink."

  "One drink."

  Alemaheyu led her into his cabin. "I've been on the Palenque for quite a while now," he said apologetically as he noticed that she was mentally comparing his cabin with her own, "and my function on the ship makes me irreplaceable. That's why Sharita assigned me a more generous cabin. The extra maintenance costs are deducted from my shares."

  "Generous" was stretching the facts. On the Las-Toór, a cabin of this size would have been allotted to a member of one of the lower crew ranks. But the Palenque was certainly not the Las-Toór, and Eniva thanked the spirits of her ancestors that at least she didn't have to sit together with Alemaheyu on a couch.

  The Terran leaped to a chair, cleared a pile of papers and empty food packages from the seat, and motioned for her to sit down. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting company, or I would have cleaned the place up a little."

  A poor excuse. What were housekeeping robots for? Eniva reminded herself once more of the Akonian politeness that was justifiably famous throughout the galaxy, thanked him, and took a seat.

  "You'll love it!" Alemaheyu announced as he opened a large refrigerator, which looked about as orderly inside as his cabin—in other words, it looked as though a transform bomb had gone off inside.

  Finally Alemaheyu found what he was looking for. He held up two brown bottles, made himself comfortable on the chair opposite without any concern for the papers piled on the seat, and placed the bottles on the small table between him and Eniva. "Perfect temperature: 8.4 degrees." Alemaheyu pulled a tool from his pants pocket and used it to open the bottles. They hissed and some droplets of foam sprayed on the table. "Brace yourself, Eniva. You're about to experience an exquisite pleasure that the entire galaxy is crazy about—genuine Terran beer!" He clinked his bottle against Eniva's and raised it to his mouth. "Cheers!"

  When Eniva didn't follow suit, he quickly murmured: "No, no glasses. You drink beer out of the bottle!" Then he took a fast swallow, as though to prove to her that it wasn't poisonous.

  Eniva gathered all of her courage and drank as well. She was prepared for the worst. She had heard that the Terrans went so far as to fill bottles with animal milk and drink it.

  The cold fluid washed across her gums and over her tongue. Then the flavor exploded on her tastebuds along with a thought in her mind: Kavla! They drank kavla! Much too cold—the temperature bordered on blasphemy—and too much carbonation, but Eniva's certainty grew as the liquid warmed in her mouth and the taste became more familiar.

  Kavla! The Terrans knew about kavla! She was so relieved that she emptied half the bottle in one gulp.

  "Do you like it?" Alemaheyu asked. For the first time, Eniva saw that he was uncertain.

  "Yes, it's not bad. It's much too cold, of course, and being in a bottle doesn't show it off to best advantage. You should put it in a microwave and serve it in a bowl ... "

  "A microwave? That would be ... "

  "Just a suggestion," Eniva said to soothe him before he could pronounce the word blasphemy. She emptied the bottle with a second gulp. The kavla may have been served in an abominable fashion, but in her stomach it blossomed into its familiar warm blessing. All of a sudden, Eniva didn't feel so lost and out of place among the Terrans. "Do you have any more kav ... er, beer?"

  "Sure." Visibly delighted by her request, Alemaheyu leaped to the refrigerator and came back with half a dozen bottles held together in a plastic sheath. "We call this a six-pack," he said earnestly. "For as long as the Terrans have known beer, they've been drinking it as a six-pack."

  At first, Eniva thought Alemaheyu had brought out far too much beer in his eagerness, but she was wrong. After she had gotten used to it, Terran kavla ran down her throat just as smoothly as Akonian. And she had been wrong about something else: Alemaheyu wasn't really such a bad fellow as she had thought. The Terran wasn't a troll, just short and slender, and he was really rather charming. He told her how he had come to sign aboard a prospecting ship and that he hoped someday to visit Ethiopia, the region of Terra from which his ancestors had long ago emigrated. And he asked about Eniva's situation. How had she come on board the Las-Toór and how was it for her there? Eniva found herself pouring her heart out to him, and when she realized what she was doing, she didn't care.

  The six-pack was emptied much too quickly. When Eniva asked for another one, Alemaheyu shook his head sadly.

&
nbsp; "Sorry. Like I said, I wasn't expecting company, and if Sharita found out I was requisitioning beer from the central supply room in our current situation ... "

  "She would have your head."

  "Exactly." Alemaheyu stared gloomily through the neck of his empty bottle at its bottom. Then he jerked up. "I've got an idea!"

  "And that would be ... "

  The Terran was already opening a drawer and taking out a small bag. With practiced movements he pulled out several paper strips, added long brown shreds of what looked like dried plant fibers, then scrapings from a lump of something, and rolled up the paper.

  "This is like ... well, not like beer. It's different. But the best thing is for you to try it yourself."

  "If you think so. How do you eat it?"

  "You don't. This is a joint." Alemaheyu's laugh was friendly. "I'll show you." He lit the paper assemblage at one end, put the other end in his mouth, inhaled the smoke, and with closed eyes held it in his lungs. When he opened his eyes again, there was a dreamy shine in them. Then he handed her the joint. The idea of inhaling smoke disgusted Eniva, but she gathered all her courage together and did it. After all, she was here to experience a foreign culture. Immediately a second layer of warmth descended on Eniva and enveloped her. Just as Alemaheyu said. It wasn't like kavla, but ... oooh!

  They smoked the joint to the end. Alemaheyu offered to make another one, but Eniva declined. Enough was enough.

  For some time, the Terran and the Akonian stared happily into space, then Eniva gathered all of her courage—from childhood on, she had been instructed never to show her ignorance, and this went deeper than kavla, beer, or joints—and asked about the sign on Alemaheyu's cabin door.

  "Oh, that," the Terran answered. "It's just a joke. I don't sell air guitars. You can't do that."

  "Then they don't exist?"

  "Oh, they exist, all right!"

  "But I don't understand. Why can't you sell them? Is it illegal?"

  "No, no, that isn't it." Alemaheyu rolled his glassy eyes. "Hm, how can I explain this to you?" He rolled his eyes for a few more moments, then leaped up again and cried out, "I know! I'll show you!" From one of the many cabinets that lined the walls of his cabin he pulled a bulbous object with a long neck.

  "A guitar!" Eniva exclaimed, proud to have recognized the instrument.

  "Correct." Alemaheyu held the guitar at waist-level, one hand around its neck and the other resting on the body so that it nearly covered the hole in the center. "You hold it like this." The hand over the hole ran along the strings and some sharp tones rang out. "And this is how you play it."

  "All right. So that's a guitar—and what's the difference between it and an air guitar?"

  "Watch closely!" Alemaheyu laid the guitar aside, gave the syntron a hand signal, and threw himself into a pose. He jerked his hips forward almost indecently while he positioned his hands as though they held a guitar. Then he closed his eyes and his fingers slid over the strings of the imaginary guitar.

  A howling erupted from the cabin's acoustic fields. Eniva would have taken off running on the spot if hadn't been for the warmth within her making her feel safe. So she remained sitting where she was and let the sound of Alemaheyu's air guitar wash over her. The cabin syntron must be programmed to follow the Terran's finger movements and convert them into tones.

  And then the miracle happened. To the same degree that the Terran threw himself into his playing, that he swayed to the rhythm and swung his hips in an unambiguous manner, Eniva opened up to his music, and from the howling came tones that left the Akonian with no other choice than to leap up and surrender to the beat. Eniva was perspiring as Alemaheyu brought the song to an end. He sank to his knees as though thanking some unknown god for the blessing of his playing, his upper body bent so far backwards that the back of his head nearly touched the floor. As the last chord died away, he opened his eyes and saw the enraptured Eniva. A look of utter satisfaction spread across his face. "I'll bet the Akonians don't have anything like that!"

  That's what you think! Eniva thought. She was about to turn to the cabin syntron and improvise a session of plejbek to show up Alemaheyu, who had turned back into a Terran with a superior attitude, but at that moment a holo appeared in the center of the cabin. It was Sharita Coho.

  "Alemaheyu!" the Terran commander said abruptly. "The Terran Residence is asking for Perry Rhodan. You've got to cook up an answer. They can't be allowed to find out that we're in dilation flight or we'll have the LFT fleet on our backs! They'll have the Lemurian ship in tow faster than we can blink, and if we're really lucky they might pay us off with ten solars per person!"

  Alemaheyu jumped up and tried to salute. "On my way! What about Eniva ta Drorar? She's here with me. Should I bring her along?"

  "What kind of a hare-brained idea—?" The commander must have realized that Eniva was listening and swallowed the rest of the sentence. "Let her continue to enjoy your excellent hospitality in peace. I'll send a robot to give your corridor a thorough cleaning. It needs it, understand?"

  The last hint was meant for Eniva. It was outrageous behavior by the Terran commander, but the Akonian was still too enraptured by the beer, joint and music to care. As Alemaheyu left the cabin murmuring innumerable excuses, she sank back into her chair, completely exhausted.

  She quickly discovered that the chair could be extended into a comfortable couch. Eniva stretched out while the scratching of the cleaning robot at the door lulled her to sleep. The last thought that went through Eniva's mind before she nodded off was that she was happy she didn't go on board the Lemurian ship. Nothing that happened there could be nearly as exciting as her adventures among the Terrans.

  26

  The largest armed force ever assembled in one place in the history of the Ship was waiting for Lemal Netwar on the Middle Deck.

  There were almost four hundred Tenoy standing in groups. No other metach could be seen anywhere. They must have decided either to take to their heels or to stay out of sight. To avoid the risk of setting off a panic on the Middle Deck, which had remained calm up to now, Lemal had not publicly announced that the Tenoy were being called together.

  The gathering of the Tenoy was a confirmation of the rumors that were racing through the Ship: strangers were on board!

  Against conventional projectiles, the Tenoy wore impenetrable body armor; they carried heavy weapons that had been stockpiled in the Ship's armories for just such an occasion. This was the first time they had been handed out. The weight of the weapons—many had to be carried by two or three individuals—didn't seem to bother the guardians. On the contrary: their mood was euphoric. From the elevator cabin, Lemal saw fists raised high in anticipation of victory, and he could read innumerable boasts on their lips.

  Most of the men and women wore face masks painted with savage-looking caricatures that only left their noses and mouths uncovered. Those who didn't have masks had let their comrades paint grotesque designs directly on their faces. The warrior identities they assumed this way filled them with a self-confidence that bordered on intoxication.

  The Tenoy had no idea what to expect, and it was just as well.

  One of the Tenarchs greeted him. "The Tenoy have reported as you ordered." The man bowed. "They await your command."

  It wasn't Launt. The Naahk would have given a great deal to have his most trusted Tenarch with him at this moment, but Launt was at the Ship's stern carrying out the execution of the traitors. Netwar had considered relieving him of the task, but ultimately chose to let him fulfill his duty: he had given this duty to Launt in order to make him an even more loyal Tenarch, who would serve him well for many more years.

  "Are the strangers still on the Outer Deck?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know their location?"

  "Yes."

  "Then take us to them."

  "But ... " The man went silent as the Naahk's icy gaze rested on him. He turned away and loudly called out orders.

  But that does
n't make any sense! the Tenarch had wanted to protest. Netwar could read it in his face. Marching toward the enemy in formation was madness. They knew the Ship; it was their home. It would be simple for them to fan out and surround the strangers undetected.

  But the Naahk held to his decision. If he had guessed the strangers' identity correctly, only unity could save them, if anything could.

  The descent to the Outer Deck took long minutes. In order to arrive as a group, the Tenoy had to use a single elevator. Netwar had gathered them at one of the big freight elevators, but because only fifty Tenoy could be transported per trip, it took more than half an hour for the entire force to reach the surface of the Outer Deck.

  Lemal went with the first squad, and as the rest of the Tenoy arrived in stages behind him, he looked out over the Outer Deck. It had been a long time since he had come here. The relatively high gravity usually kept him off this deck, and only the pain medication made it possible for him to be here now. He hated to imagine the damage he was causing to his joints by being here, and he had no idea how much longer his body would hold up. Even though he understood what was inevitable, he couldn't face the idea that someday he would be unable to move, leaving the Ship without guidance.

  The Outer Deck appeared peaceful. The well-ordered rows of fields stretched into the haze, and no metach or strangers could be seen anywhere. But appearances were deceptive. They were hiding down there somewhere.

  Lemal wondered how the strangers had found them. Even between the vastness of space and the hyperdetection shield with which the builders had equipped the Ship, their discovery couldn't have been by chance. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that the high gravity was trying to drag him to the ground and crush him. He recognized it as primarily an emotional reaction to stress.

  "Transport is complete." The Tenarch's report pulled him back to the present.

  "Then we don't want to waste any time." He pulled at the chain around his neck, bringing his medallion of office into view from under the body armor. He positioned it on his chest so the Tenoy could see it clearly. Then he drew his weapon, released the safety and took his place at the head of the guardians.